1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a character display method for handheld devices, or more particularly, to a character display device, a character display method, and a character display program that can display a document containing both icons and characters.
2. Description of the Related Art
As far as conventional handheld devices are concerned, when a document containing both icons and characters is displayed, the attributes of each letter are designated irrespective of whether the letter is a icon or a character. The icon or character whose attributes have been designated is then rendered. Thus, the document containing both icons and characters is displayed. Therefore, when an icon or a character contained in a document containing both icons and characters is rendered in the conventional handheld device, the attributes of each letter must be determined irrespective of whether the letter is an icon or a character. It therefore takes much time to render each letter. By the way, in this specification, the icon shall refer to a picture having the size of a character, and the character shall refer to a character or symbol capable of being entered at a computer.
The attributes of a character or an icon include a color (red, blue, yellow, etc.), a font type (Mincho type, Gothic type, etc.), a font typeface (standard fact, italic face, boldface, etc.), a font size (8, 12, 16, etc.), and a background color (white, black, yellow, etc.).
Patent Document 1 describes a method of searching mails, which are preserved in a portable cellular phone, for a mail containing a specific character string or icon. According to the first embodiment described in Patent Document 1, mails are searched to see if their subjects and/or texts contain a specific character string. According to the second embodiment described in Patent Document 1, mails are searched according to a color of an icon contained in the mails. Specific codes representing icons include a code representing the pattern of an icon and a code representing the color thereof. In Patent Document 1, the code representing the color of an icon is checked to discriminate the icon.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2003-141044 (refer to Claims and Paragraphs in Specification [0001], [0005], [0030] to [0032])
However, according to the method of searching a mail preserved in a portable cellular phone described in Patent Document 1, a long processing time is required for displaying a document which contains both icons and characters, and it takes much time to display the document.